San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1887-05-06
FRIDAY, MAY 6, 1887.
SHOULD VICE WED2

The necessity for legal restriction up
on marriage, has long been felt by those
who have concerned themselves with
the result Of promiscuous marriages.
The state restraints from marriage within
certain OonsanguinOus lines, but places
no restrictions upon the marriage of
criminals or OF insane persons, or OF
paupers. The late escapade OF Miss
Van Zandt at Chicago, in her determined
effort to wed the Anarchist Spies, while
in Jail, has awakened the legislative and
social conscience Of that city, and its
awakening is seen in recent action OF
the illinois legislature. The bill which
has recently passed that body prohibits
the marriage of insane persons, OF pau
pers, and Of inmates OF prisons 1t is a
singular comment upon the progress of
our customs and civilization, socially
considered, that such law is only now
passed. At first sight, one would
naturally conclude that the general
sense OF community would long since
have demanded some such regulation,
but ii is not SO. Or, at least, it has not
found that expression in statutory en-
actment, which alone could make 1t
binding and effective. The law will
very likely be assailed in certain quar-
tiers as blow at popular liberty, as an
interference with the liberty Of the SUBJ
ject, as an unwsrranted infringement
upon the social, domestic and sfiectional
rights of individuals. All the same, the
law is move in the right direction. The
breeding of cattle and horses and sheep
is intelligently followed. In some Sec
tions diseased animals are not suffered
to breed and perpetuate their diseases
TO their offspring and progeny, thus
Vitiating the purity OF the stock. Good
breeders do not consider it either wise
or right to breed exceptionally vicious
animals, as they transmit their qualitI es.
The state, however, which undertakes
to regulate the matter OF our eating and
drinking, permits the men and women
of unsOund minds to marry and rear
a generation of lunatics; permits
the vicious within our very prison walls
to marry and perpetuate the ourses OF
their criminal instincts and tendencies,
uncurbed by any possible restraints of a
home education and government, to their
pOsterity; permits the paupers who
swarm in our poor houses to marry and
increase the number of psupers to the
end Of the chapter a; permits the inmates
OF hospitals, diseased In body II not also
In mind, to marry and entail the dis
abilities and curses of their diseases to
generations yet unborn permits all vice
and crime and debauChery and physical
and moral unsoundness to marry and re-
produce itself, and then raises its hands
in holy horror at the degeneracy of the
age and the increase of crime. The ex-
ample OF Illinois, wholesome and
righteous example too, should be fol-
lowed by every legislature in this ma
ton. Cutting of the sources OF SO much
of our pauperism, impotency, crime and
disease atthe,very fountain bead. would
do much towards cleansing the stream OF
our natural life and render 1t by COM
psrison pure and healthy. The objeo-
tions and difficulties to be urged. and
they are freely conceded, cannot absolve
the state from its duty to itself and to
those over whom it exercises guardian.
ship.